Three Nigerian-approved hajj airlines – Max Air, Air Peace and Umza Aviation Services – have declined to sign the 2025 pilgrims’ airlift agreement with the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON).
The reasons for their action include disagreement over currency of payment, pilgrims’ allocations and rejection of some airlines by state governors, among others.
NAHCON had on January 15, 2025, announced the selection of Flynas, Air Peace, Max Air and UMZA Aviation Services Limited as the official carriers for the 2025 Hajj operation.
However, only Flynas, a Saudi-designated Nigerian Hajj air carrier, signed the deal with the commission on Monday, March 10, 2025.
The agreement was signed by the chief commercial officer of Flynas, Mr Khaled Alhejairi, and the chairman and CEO of NAHCON, Prof Abdullahi Saleh Usman.
After signing the pact with Flynas, the NAHCON chairman told the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that all the selected airlines had accepted to be paid in naira – a claim sources within the commission and the airlines said was misleading.
Findings by LEADERSHIP Weekend showed that as of Friday afternoon (March 14), the three affected airlines were yet to sign the agreement with NAHCON.
When contacted, Max Air spokesperson, Barr Shehu Wada, didn’t provide reasons for his airline’s refusal to sign the agreement. He directed our reporter to NAHCON, saying it is the one responsible for the airlift deal.
“Please, you should ask NAHCON. On Monday, we were all there for the signing, but NAHCON said they would call us the next day, Tuesday. But they never did. We are waiting for them,” Wada said.
NAHCON spokesperson, Fatima Sanda Usara, in her reaction yesterday, said the local airlines didn’t sign because of some issues that are “now being holistically addressed.” She said some of these issues include the number of pilgrims allocated to the airlines and the rejection of Air Peace by some states.
Mrs Usara said those issues have been ironed out, and the local airlines would sign the airlift agreements today (Friday).
This is not the first time that local airlines have refused to sign airlift agreements with NAHCON. In 2023, for instance, Flynas was the only airline that signed the airlift pact with the commission when four other local airlines declined, demanding fare increase over Sudan’s conflict.
Thereafter, the commission decided to deduct $100 each from the BTA of the 75,000 Nigerian pilgrims and shared it to the four local airlines – Max Air, Air Peace, Azman Air and Aero Contractors.
Flynas, which was the only carrier that saved the day then and signed the agreement despite the conflict in Sudan, was surprisingly excluded from the sharing even though its over 28,000 pilgrims from Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Niger, Zamfara, Sokoto and Kebbi states were affected by the $100 deduction by NAHCON.
The deduction of $2.8 million (28,000 x $100) BTA from Flynas pilgrims to pay the air tickets of pilgrims from other states was the first in hajj operation in Nigeria.
An official said, “What NAHCON should have done was simply to ask the relevant state governors to balance their pilgrims’ airfare. But to deduct the BTA of other pilgrims and pay the air tickets of some pilgrims in other states is simply callous.”
It was gathered that some of the affected pilgrims have since petitioned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over these deductions. “The $100 BTA deduction is one of the many cases against the Zikirullah Kunle Hassan-led administration pending before the EFCC. So many NAHCON staff members have been invited by the anti-graft agency over the same investigation,” another NAHCON source said.
One of the pilgrims affected by the illegal defections, Alhaji Razak Alamutu, urged the EFCC not to abandon the investigation, saying, “We want our money returned.”
Insiders are worried that this delay of not tidying up the agreement with the local airlines may affect the hajj operation because Nigeria had already announced that it would begin airlifting of its pilgrims to Saudi Arabia from May 5.
They feared that the delay in the local airlines signing the agreement would deny them the opportunity to secure favourable landing slots in Madinah Airport.
For instance, Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) portal for submission of hajj flight requests has been open since October 6, 2024 – more than six months ago. However, no Nigerian airline has submitted a request, even though the deadline is about a month away – April 28, 2025.
Aviation experts say the delay in acquiring GACA slots may bar the local airlines from getting good slots that would enable it transport pilgrims directly to Madinah Airport, thereby reigniting the now rested controversy of Miqat (a designated boundary where Muslim pilgrims must enter the state of ihram).
This newspaper reports that between 2015 and 2019, Nigeria, for the first time, achieved a 100 percemnt feat of transporting its pilgrims to Madinah before Arafat, thereby ending the squabbles over Miqat.
Three airlines were said to have failed to sign the airlift agreement over a series of disagreements with the commission. Insiders said Flynas, with 22,893 pilgrims, would be paid in its home country’s currency – Saudi Riyal – contrary to Usman’s claims in the BBC interview.
Sources said NAHCON chairman’s decision to pay Flynas in Saudi Riyal is fiscally impossible because Nigeria does not have a currency swap deal with the kingdom.
“The CBN can’t give Flynas Riyal. It has to convert dollar to Riyal to pay the airline according to prevailing exchange rate. Therefore, the saving he claims Nigeria would make from it is a hoax,” an official of the commission said.
Again, Max Air, it was learned, has refused to accept payment in naira. The commission has allocated 23,342 pilgrims to the airline.
Also, Air Peace refrained from signing the airlift agreement over the number of pilgrims allocated to it. The commission has allocated 9,145 to the airline. Air Peace allegedly complained that Umza Aviation Services – a new airline with smaller aircraft – was allocated 15,893 pilgrims, nearly double the Air Peace’s even though it has wide body aircraft.
Some officials of the local airlines asserted that the decision was not well-thought out. “The naira payment model is ill-conceived by NAHCON. Even though we operate in Nigeria, our expenses are US-dollar based,” one of the airline’s officials who declined to be named, said.
The official insisted that all their payments are in dollars with the exception of taxes to NCAA, FAAN and other federal agencies. “We pay for the aircraft maintenance, spare parts, royalties to GACA, fuelling in Saudi Arabia, crew salaries, all in foreign currencies,” the official said.
Another official said paying airlines in Naira to source their forex in the black market is economically self-destructive because it would reverse the gains Nigeria has achieved so far in the foreign exchange ecosystem under President Bola Tinubu.
“By the time the airlines take their naira to the black market in exchange for dollars, they would put pressure on the naira. The naira may crash and the scarcity of the dollar would return. These are some of the negative implications the NAHCON policy would have on the economy,” another official said.
An official of the commission said NAHCON has a better way of handling the exchange rate fluctuation – the major reason behind the introduction of the naira payment system.
The staff said the NAHCON leadership could solve this problem by “adopting the Barr Abdullahi Mukhtar’s model of collecting the dollar from the CBN and blocking it into an account. The commission can access it only when it wants to pay the airlines. That is what he did during his tenure as NAHCON chairman. This solves the problem of exchange rate fluctuations.”
Another problem delaying the signing of the airlift agreement was the protest by some state governors who rejected Air Peace scheduled to airlift their pilgrims. The governors said the airline performed woefully in the last two years by deploying smaller aircraft, among other operational challenges.
This newspaper learned that Niger State Governor Mohammed Umaru Bago had to go to NAHCON on Wednesday, March 11, purposely to protest the deployment of Air Peace to airlift Niger State pilgrims.
Nigeria has projected that 71,274 pilgrims would perform this year’s pilgrimage under the state quota.
